Jakob Uszkoreit: “Biological software is a little bit like computer software in that you have some specification of the behavior that you want, and then you have a compiler that translates that into a piece of computer software that then runs on a computer exhibiting the functions or the functionality that you specify. You specify a piece of a biological program and you compile that, but not with an engineered compiler, because life hasn’t been engineered like computers have been engineered. But with a learned AI compiler, you translate that or compile that into molecules that when inserted into biological systems, organisms, our cells exhibit those functions that you’ve programmed into…A very, very simple example of that are the mRNA COVID vaccines where the program says, “Make this modified viral antigen” and then our cells make that protein. But you could imagine molecules that exhibit far more complex behaviors. And if you want to get a picture of how complex those behaviors could be, just remember that RNA viruses are just that. They’re just an RNA molecule that when entering an organism exhibits incredibly complex behavior such as distributing itself across an organism, distributing itself across the world, doing certain things only in a subset of your cells for a certain period of time, and so on and so forth. And so you can imagine that if we managed to even just design molecules with a teeny tiny fraction of such functionality, of course with the goal not of making people sick, but of making them healthy, it would truly transform medicine.”
WSJ: “You can ask for almost anything, it turns out. You might not get it. But if you do it right, it shouldn’t hurt you. Always have what William Ury—co-author of the negotiation bible “Getting to Yes”—calls a BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In other words, make yourself a solid plan B before you make an ask. If their answer is no, will you walk, focus on another project or start a side hustle? How good is the plan B compared to what you’re asking for? The more alluring the alternative, the more power you have in the negotiation. Think creatively. Do you need a raise, or do you need a more flexible schedule or an unpaid sabbatical? You’re not making demands, you’re starting a conversation.”
Sully Omarr: “One-off agent tasks are some of the least imaginative use cases…rather have an agents automating a 2 minute task 10,000 times over a 15-minute task once.” [via Arnold Kling]
Somak Raychaudhury: “The template we have… go to university at 18, stop learning at 21, stay with it all your life — that can’t happen now…When you come to universities, writing is a core skill that is expected. People often think that if you do sciences, you don’t need to write. That’s not true. In the 21st century, we need problem-solving skills at all levels, not just in social sciences and humanities. We need writing skills, comprehension skills, critical skills. The schools don’t prepare the students for this. There are certain boards like the IB. They have courses to do this. In our core school board system, we don’t encourage critical thinking. Writing has to be underlying every process of education.”
Bloomberg: “[Tim Berners-Lee has] been trying to steer the web back to that free and democratic idea. His answer is a digital wallet, a piece of the internet that stores everything from your medical records to your social media posts, your shopping history to your family photos. But unlike the siloed apps and services we use today, the wallets allow you to control exactly who sees what. Berners-Lee has been working on this radical idea for five years through a startup called Inrupt…For most of the rest of us on the internet that Berners-Lee started, the future is clear. Our personal information will remain scattered across countless databases, increasingly processed by AI systems that serve the interests of large technology conglomerates. It’s not that better alternatives don’t exist, but the companies fashioning our AI futures have too much to lose by giving users control over their digital lives.”
